This epidemiological study investigates the effects of occupational and familial strain on coronary heart disease (CHD) in women. A generalized model of strain is derived from work on occupation strain which has been shown to predict CHD in men. The data to be used come from the prospective Alameda County, California health survey. They are particularly rich and provide a unique opportunity to investigate the effects of strain on CHD over a 16-year period. Mortality data are available for the entire 16-year period, and morbidity data at 9-year follow-up are collected for a cohort of women aged 45-64 at baseline (1965). Using standard statistical methods, analyses will investigate how CHD is related to specific combinations of occupational, marital and parental statuses. The study will replicate similar analyses done on the Framingham study women which showed that women clerical workers married to blue-collar husbands who also had three or more children had excess incidence of CHD compared to other women and to men in either blue-collar or clerical jobs (1). Additional analyses will examine whether a generalized model of occupational and familial strain can predict CHD mortality and morbidity in the Alameda County sample using more sophisticated measures than used in the Framingham study. The generalized model will also be tested to see if it has predictive value for general health outcomes--overall physical health status and all-cause mortality. The research should clarify the configuration of occupational, parental and marital circumstances associated with CHD in women, and should identify they social groups in which the dynamics of role strain can be studied most profitably. Such research is crucial for explaining role of social and behavioral factors in the etiology of CHD in both men and women.